Friday Photo: Residential Storefronts

A few weeks ago a post about a business located inside of a single-family house on Grand Ave in St. Paul wanting to expand out to the sidewalk reminded me how much I like single-family houses with storefronts on them. As far as I can tell, this type of building represents the best of all worlds in urbanism: it’s an incremental intensification of land use that also preserves existing structures (resources), and is generally undertaken only by locally owned businesses, keeping money in the local economy.

Others I’ve seen around the same area are Bulldog at Lyndale & 26th and the super crappy convenience store at Grand & 28th.

The ones along commercial corridors are likely zoned for commercial or mixed use, but there are also a handful of them along minor corridors that are probably considered “non-conforming” by the city. I know for sure the one across from my old apartment at Grand & 28th was non-conforming (R2 zoning or something like that)